Reflections on Oral and Poster Presentations of Percent of Modern C-14 (pmC) Content Studies of Dinosaur Bones given at the AOGS-AGU Singapore Conference

Introduction: On 9 April, 2012, all 10 coauthors were pleasantly surprised to receive an e-mail letter accepting our abstract on C-14 dating of dinosaur bones from the Asia Oceania Geoscience Society (AOGS). This was our sixth submission to as many conventions or regional conferences of geological or paleontological societies, so we were naturally delighted even though we were only awarded a poster session at the Singapore conference. In Singapore we were assigned to the Biogeoscience section BGO2-A012 and later Dr. Thomas Seiler of Germany was also allowed to give an oral presentation, as none of our Ph.D. co-authors was available. The AOGS letter of acceptance with the title, abstract and list of authors from Europe and the United States reads as follows:

Dear Authors,

Congratulations! Your abstract has been accepted for presentation at the AOGS - AGU (WPGM) Joint Assembly 2012 taking place from 13 to 17 August, 2012 at the Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore. The review report is as shown. This and other meeting details - your presentation schedule, meeting registration, invoice, receipts, etc will be posted as they become available on your personal page on MARS.

BG02-A012 A COMPARISON OF δ13C & pMC VALUES for TEN CRETACEOUS-JURASSIC DINOSAUR BONES from TEXAS to ALASKA USA, CHINA AND EUROPE [Note: pMC is percent of modern C-14]
Hugh MILLER, Hugh OWEN, Robert BENNETT, Jean DE PONTCHARRA, Maciej GIERTYCH, Joe TAYLOR, Marie Claire VAN OOSTERWYCH, Otis KLINE, Doug WILDER, Beatrice DUNKEL

Background - or how it all began: Our field and lab research on origins begin in 1982 with several days to a week excavations in 1983, 1987, 1988, 1989 for fossil dinosaur and human-like footprints in the Mid-Cretaceous Glen Rose Formation along the Paluxy River in Texas, USA. Since there was no material available in the clays between the rock layers for K-Ar dating, our geophysicist consultant in the late 1980’s convinced his former professors at the University of Arizona Isotope labs to C-14 date the small 2-5 cm long black and brittle carbonized wood discovered in the clay stratum yielding ages of 37,480 and 37,420 years. Our research providentially paralleled the timeline of Guy Berthault's research on how sediments form without either of us knowing of the other's research for about a decade.

A preliminary paper on the fossil footprints was written by our Creation Research Science Education Foundation (CRSEF) consultant for the International Creation Conference (ICC) held in Pittsburgh, PA, USA in 1986. A second paper was peer reviewed and also accepted for the second ICC Conference in Pittsburgh held at the Duquesne Catholic University in 1990. The shocking [to mainstream scientists] of 2000 times younger ages for the fossil wood prompted our team to C-14 date dinosaur bone fragments from Cretaceous and Jurassic formations obtained from local ranchers in Texas and Colorado right before the 1990 ICC conference. The C-14 ages were comparable to that obtained for the wood. Bone fragments obtained for surface analysis study from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History storage facilities in Pittsburgh PA gave similar but contested younger ages than 23, 000 years BP.

At the 1990 ICC conference our team was able to arrange for an interview with a reporter for the United Press International which received about 30-40 % coverage in USA newspapers nationwide. We later learned that this greatly angered the Carnegie paleontologists and we have summarily been attacked as pseudo scientists by them and others. Of course they did not cross-check our data on other dinosaurs, at least to our knowledge.

In July of 1994 our CRSEF sent a team to Alaska by plane to recover dinosaur bones from the Liscomb bone beds near the mouth of the Colville River that empties into the Arctic Ocean. This daring expedition of five brave souls traversed 60 or so miles of the Colville in rafts and brought back one fossilized Hadrosaur skull and about~100 lbs of dinosaur bone fragments for possible extraction and C-14 dating of collagen. They spent a couple of nights in the local Alaskan native jail for their comfort before their plane could pick them up. Their exploits are covered in a book which is available on Amazon.

In 1996 we returned with amber particles of one cm or less after a week’s expedition for dinosaur bones in the state of Wyoming. The amber was more important than the bones which contain only 1 to 3 % carbon as amber is 80% carbon. Field paleontologist Joe Taylor, director of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton, TX, led us to the specific stratum where amber was buried with a Triceratops that had been removed several years earlier. The amber was eventually C-14 dated in Germany and a paper published, thanks to Dr. Maciej Giertych of Poland. Two amber papers were then peer reviewed and published several years later in the CRSQ.

In 2003 I left the CRSEF and founded the Paleochronology Group to intensify the research along the Paluxy River in cooperation with the Creation Evidence Museum of Glen Rose Texas and to resume C-14 dating in licensed AMS University laboratories. In 2005 the Paleo Group began a cooperative C-14 study of dinosaur bones excavated by Otis Kline who is director of the Glendive Montana Dinosaur Fossil Museum.

After our major paper was presented at the 2009 conferences held at the national Research Council of Italy in Rome and at the Gustav Siewerth Academie in southern Germany, http://www.sciencevsevolution.org/Holzschuh.htm Dr. Robert Bennett, Dr. Marie Clare Van Oosterwich and I decided to challenge mainstream natural scientists to cross-check our C-14 data by dating dinosaur bones in dinosaur bone repositories, as our data is also supported by Marie’s research in mineralogy.

Singapore and Beyond:

When our abstract was accepted by the organizers of the Singapore conference, several questions immediately arose: (1) Who could and should go? (2) How would we acquire the funds to pay the up to $500 registration fee/per person, hotel costs at the Santosa Island resort area and transportation? In addition, Hugh Owen brought up the need for one of our Ph.D. coauthors to give an oral presentation if we could get permission from the AOGS.

Divine Providence came to the rescue again: Since only Hugh Owen and I could go, Hugh contacted Dr. Thomas Seiler who agreed to go if we obtained permission for an oral presentation. As the contact person for the team and the expected presenter I was able to get permission from the Biogeoscience convener as attested by the following e-mail.

Dear Hugh, the oral presentation schedule for the session BG02 is now finalized and the abstract (BG02-A012) is assigned as a oral presentation. Thank you very much for your contribution. I am looking forward to meeting you and Dr. Seiler in AOGS. Have a nice weekend. Best regards, Jung-Hyun Kim.

Also thanks to significant contributions from some of our authors who could not attend, as well as many other generous benefactors—a total of 17 individuals—we were able to raise the necessary $8,000 including the $700 charge for recording the oral presentation at the last minute.

After our arrival in Singapore, Thomas refined his power point presentation which he then gave in one of the conference rooms on Wednesday afternoon, August 15. There was only a small group of about twenty attendees for the session during which seven 15-minute papers were presented. Thomas briefly explained how the dinosaur bones had been collected and pre-treated before being C-14 dated, and he briefly presented the results of the C-14 dating without saying anything about the actual “age” of the dinosaurs. As Thomas gave his presentation, I noticed the first signs of incredulity on the faces of the two lady conveners. The same incredulity was reflected on the face of the last scheduled speaker, a geologist from Dalhousie University of Nova Scotia, Canada, who kept looking back at the video cameramen as they went about their business, recording the 16 minute event. During the question and answer session after Thomas’s presentation, a scientist from the University of Bremen in Germany expressed his amazement at the results that Thomas had presented. However, none of the other scientists in the audience—all but two of whom were Asian—offered any criticism of Thomas’s methodology, of his results, or of his recommendation that other scientists attempt to replicate his results by C-14 dating dinosaur bones from their collections.

Because our 8 foot high x 3 foot wide poster of photos and tabulations had to be sent separately in a mailing tube, it did not accompany me on my plane! Because it was unavailable at our oral presentation on Wednesday, August 15, we asked if we could show it on Thursday if it arrived on Wednesday. Convener Jung-Hyun Kim was very gracious and also agreed to allow us to video tape our oral presentation. Fortunately the poster was delivered to our hotel Wednesday night and we were allowed to set up at 10 AM on Thursday where we stood for three hours answering occasional questions, including a few from the professors from the University of Bremen and Dalhousie University who had heard Thomas’s oral presentation the day before. The Canadian scientist said that he had been up much of the night trying to decide what he would say to us if he ran into us the next day. He then expressed his disdain for our research and his embarrassment that the AGU had given us a forum. The scientist from Bremen University was equally skeptical about our results but more restrained in his criticism. I gave the Canadian my business card and three page tabulations to study as I did for several other inquirers. In our discussions with both scientists we tried to point out that there are many geological phenomena that have occurred in the past but which are not occurring today, phenomena which could not be produced by present processes. We argued that the C-14 dating results suggest that catastrophic geological events could have produced much of the earth’s sedimentary strata and morphology rapidly, thus greatly reducing the time needed to produce these effects. The skeptical scientists seemed quite entrenched in their uniformitarian views, but they gave no hint of the action they were about to take.

When I got home from Singapore a few days later I noticed that our abstract #5 had been deleted from the AOGS website. I immediately informed our authors and e-mailed a protest to the president of the AOGS, a professor at Tokyo University, and other AOGS officers, asking for an explanation. After several exchanges, I received an e-mail with a pdf file from an AOGS conference official on August 28, signed by the two conference chairmen with the following unscientific reasoning:

Dear Mr. Miller, As a result of comments from attendees at the recent AOGS-AGU (WPGM) meeting in Singapore we have examined your abstract which was delivered in session BG-02. The interpretation which you present in your abstract is that the age of various dinosaurs, previously interpreted as being Mesozoic in age, are less than ~50,000 years. Your report that these ages were calculated using C-14 methods. There is obviously an error in these data. The abstract was apparently not reviewed properly and was accepted in error. For this reason we have exercised our authority as program chairs and rescinded the abstract. The abstract will no longer appear on the AOGS web site. Program Chairs, Minhan Dai, Xiamen University Peter Swart, University of Miami

Update on the Singapore censorship and future research: We sent a rebuttal letter to the President of the AOGS but received no response. Both the schedule for the August 15, 2012, presentation, abstract and authors’ names are listed in the CD-Rom given to each of the 2000 registrants, so it is possible to prove that our abstract was approved by the conference organizers. We encourage AGU members to protest against the flagrant censorship of our research, and we urge other researchers to C-14 date dinosaur bones from bone repositories around the world and to present papers confirming or challenging our data.

We are currently engaged in recovering collagen from burial sites in Alberta, Canada, believed to have been preserved under 1000 to 1500 feet of ice for 700 years after the Deluge. The Paleo-chronology Group has found a museum that will cooperate with us in providing bone samples to labs for extracting collagen if they send the bones directly to the lab and we subsidize the $575/sample. We hope to C-14 date dinosaur bones from the Patagonian state of Argentina that was also under ice. A dinosaur egg shell supplied by Joe Taylor was sent to our main lab source for C-14 dating in late March. In mid 2012 we had a complete elemental analysis of bone samples from a Hadrosaur and a Triceratops containing only 0.2 and 0.35% collagen, respectively to see how much Uranium (U) and thorium (Th) they contained. Since there was but ppm’s of U and Th it would be impossible for the radiation from these elements to change the Nitrogen in the collagen into C-14. This ruled out nuclear activation as a source of C-14 contamination.

Conclusion: This C-14 data along with sedimentology, mineralogy, dinosaur depictions world-wide and recent CT-scans of some fossil human footprints with dinosaur tracks support the words of Christ, of Scripture, of the Church Fathers and of all the Church Councils which speak of the fiat creation of the different kinds of spiritual and corporeal creatures, followed by a global flood.

Hugh Miller, BS in chemistry and Hugh Owen, MS in education [2200 words]

Table 1. Results of testing for ¹⁴C in dinosaur bone

collagen and other fractions from Texas (TX) to

Alaska (AK), a distance of 6500 km

Dinosaur Lab/method/fraction ¹⁴C Years B.P. δ13C/ Date of State,

(a) (b)(c) (d) pmC(e) Report USA

Acro GX-15155-A/Beta/bio >32,400 -8.3/- 011/10/1989 TX

Acro GX-15155-A-AMS/bio 25,750 ± 280 -8.3/4.08 06/14/1990 TX

Acro AA-5786-AMS/bio/scrapings 23,760 ± 270 - 10/23/1990 TX

Acro UGAMS-7509a/AMS/bio 29,690 ± 90 -4.7/2.48 10/27/2010 TX

Acro UGAMS-7509b/AMS/bow 30,640 ± 90 -23.8/2.21 10/27/2010 TX

Allosaurus UGAMS-02947/AMS/bio 31,360 ± 100 -6.6/1.98 05/01/2008 CO

Hadrosaur #1 KIA-5523/AMS/bow 31,050 + 230/-220 -28.4/2.10 10/01/1998 AK

Hadrosaur #1 KIA-5523/AMS/hum 36,480 + 560/-530 -25.5/1.07 10/01/1998 AK

Triceratops #1 GX-32372-AMS/col(0.35%) 30,890 ± 200 -20.1/2.16 08/25/2006 MT

Triceratops #1 GX-32647-Beta/bow 33,830 +2910/-1960 -16.6/1.38 09/12/2006 MT

Triceratops #1 UGAMS-04973a-AMS/bio 24,340 ± 70 -3.1/4.83 10/29/2009 MT

Triceratops #2 UGAMS-03228a-AMS/bio 39,230 ± 140 -4.7/0.76 08/27/2008 MT

Triceratops #2 UGAMS-03228b-AMS/col(?) 30,110 ± 80 -23.8/2.36 08/27/2008 MT

Hadrosaur #2 GX-32739-Beta/ext 22,380 ± 800 -16.0/- 01/06/2007 MT Hadrosaur #2 GX-32678/AMS/w 22,990 ±130 -18.4/- 04/04/2007 MT

Hadrosaur #2 GX-31950-AMS/col 1950 ± 50 (contam) -23.5/ - 01/18/2006 MT

Hadrosaur #2 UGAMS-01935/AMS/bio 25,670±220 -6.4/4.09 04/10/2007 MT

Hadrosaur #2 UGAMS-01936/AMS/w 25,170±230 -15.7/4.36 04/10/2007 MT

Hadrosaur #2 UGMAS-01937/AMS/col(0.2%) 23,170±170 -22.7/5.59 04/10/2007 MT

Hadrosaur #2 UGAMS-01938/AMS/hum 2,560±70 (contam) -21.5/72.7 04/10/2007 MT Hadrosaur #3 UGAMS-9893/AMS/bio 37,660±160 -4.9/- 11/29/2011 ND

Apatosaur UGAMS-9891/AMS/bio 38,250±160 -9.1/- 11/29/2011 CO

(a) Acro (Acrocanthosaurus) is a carnivorous dinosaur excavated in 1984 near Glen Rose TX by C. Baugh and G. Detwiler; in 108 MA Cretaceous sandstone – identified by Dr. W. Langston of Un. of TX at Austin.

Allosaurus is a carnivorous dinosaur excavated in 1989 by J. Hall, A Murray team and under a Brontosaurus skeleton in the Wildwood section on a ranch west of Grand Junction CO in 150 Ma Late Jurassic sandstone of the Morrison formation - identified by using Allosaurus bone handbook submitted by local museum curator.

Hadrosaur #1, a duck billed dinosaur bone fragments excavated in 1994 along Colville River by G. Detwiler, J. Whitmore team in the famous Liscomb, bone bed of Alaska (AK) North Slope – validated by Dr. J. Whitmore.

Hadrosaur #2, a duck billed dinosaur lone femur bone excavated in 2004 in clay in the NW ¼, NE ¼ of Sec. 32, T16N, R56 E, Dawson County, Montana (MT) by O. Kline team of the Glendive (MT) Dinosaur and Fossil Museum – identified by paleontology descriptions and sawed open by O. Kline, H. Miller team in 2005 to retrieve samples for testing for ¹⁴C content – very low collagen content as expected for bone ≥ 23,170 years old (Arslenov method used for collagen extraction).

Triceratops #1, a ceratopsid dinosaur lone femur bone excavated in 2004 in Cretaceous clay at 47º 6’ 18” by 104º 39’ 22” Montana by O. Kline team of the Glendive MT Dinosaur & Fossil Museum – identified by paleontology descriptions and sawed open by O. Kline, H. Miller team in 2005 to retrieve samples for testing for 14C content – very low collagen content as expected for old bone.

Triceratops #2, a very large ceratopsid-type dinosaur excavated in 2007 in Cretaceous clay at is 47' 02" 44N and 104' 32" 49W by O. Kline team of Glendive Montana (MT) Dinosaur & Fossil Museum – identified by paleontology descriptions but may be a new species; outer bone fragments of femur tested for ¹⁴C.

Hadrosaur #3, scrapings from a duck billed dinosaur hip bone, excavated and identified by Joe Taylor of Mt Blanco Fossil Museum of Crosbyton TX. The bone was excavated near Marmarth, North Dakota (ND) in the Hell creek Cretaceous formation.

Apatosaur, scrapings from a rib still imbedded in the clay soil of a ranch in Colorado (CO), partially excavated in 2007 and 2009 in 150 Ma late Jurassic strata by C. Baugh and B. Dunkel - identified by C. Baugh.

(b) GX is Geochron Labs Cambrdge MA, USA; AA is University of Arizona Tuscon AZ, USA; UG is University of Georgia, Athens GA, USA; KIA is Christian Albrechts Universität, Kiel Germany; AMS is Accelerated Mass Spectrometer; Beta is the conventional method of counting Beta decay particles; Bio is carbonate fraction of bioapatite. Bow is bulk organic fraction of whole bone; Col is collagen fraction; w or ext is charred, exterior or whole bone fragments; Hum is humic acids.

(c) Weight of samples:

Sample size sent to RC lab, ≈ 170 g as required by Geochron in 1990 for GX-15155, conventional beta

Sample size sent to RC lab, excess CO₂ from GX-15155 encapsulated in glass and sent to NZ lab, AMS

Sample size sent to RC lab, ≈ 50 mg as scrapings from different Acro bone for AA-5786, AMS

Sample size sent to RC lab, 6.4 g from femur for UGAMS-7509a & b, AMS

Sample size sent to RC lab, ≈ 30 g for UGAMS-02947, AMS

Sample size sent to RC lab, ≈ 5 g for KIA-5523, AMS

Sample size sent to RC lab, 8.4 g for GX-32372-Internal bone material, AMS

Sample size sent to RC lab, 146 g for GX-32647-Outer bone material, conventional beta

Sample size sent to RC lab, 2.3 g for GX-31950-Internal bone material, AMS

Sample size sent to RC lab, 160 g for GX-32678-AMS & GX-32739-Outer bone, Conventional beta

Sample size sent to RC lab, 56 g for UGAMS-01935, 01936, 01937, 01938-Internal bone, AMS

(d) Contam is Contaminant in collagen fraction; it could be humic acids or an unknown but it was removed

by acid - base - acid pretreatment and was only 1.3% of collagen sample in UGAMS-01918. In GX-31950 the contaminant overwhelmed the collagen as the sample was too small which is a good reason for extracting and dating other fractions and submitting large samples. This hadrosaur femur bone was found along a dry wash.

(e) δ¹³C is expressed by the formula

pmC is the percent of modern ¹⁴C in the dinosaur bone fractions such as collagen and biotapatite.

Contact robert.bennett@rcn.com or hugoc14@aol.com for further information

[Figure 1: Triceratops # 1: Avoiding sampling near cracks mitigates against contamination. Locations where samples were extracted (sawing and coring) for ¹⁴C testing are noted with colored circles: Green, 8.4 g (interior, trabecular): 30 mg collagen fraction (0.35%) was 30,890 ± 200 ¹⁴C years BP. Red, 146 g (edge of interior) collagen fraction was 33,830 + 2910/-1960 ¹⁴C years BP. Yellow: bone was cracked; no carbon in any of three interior samples. Blue: bone cracked; again no carbon, but outer bone CaCO₃ fraction of bioapatite yielded 24,340 ±70 ¹⁴C years BP. The ¹⁴C content of material matrix surrounding the bone yielded 19,820 ± 80 ¹⁴C years BP.]

(1) http://www.sciencevsevolution.org/Holzschuh.html      Peer reviewed 2009 technical paper - published in books in Italy and Germany.  It was noted briefly on ScienceINSIDER as part of a larger controversy in late 2009.   http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/12/italy-science-a.html  *

(2) http://newgeology.us/presentation48.html  --- Our  press release late August 2012

after our abstract had been deleted from the AOGS web site

(3) Carbon-14 dated dinosaur bones - under 40,000 years old - YouTube 16 minute lecture presented at Biogeoscience session of the Singapore AOGS-AGU assembly conference of 2000 scientists [need to turn up speaker volume] August 15, 2012.

(4) http://youtu.be/TgM_p9UfOeI   12 minute U-tube  November 13, 2012 showing empirical lab reports and documentation of dinosaur excavations.

(5) http://www.sedimentology.fr/  Sedimentology studies refute the assumptions of Darwin, Lyell and Stennen before them that the top strata is always YOUNGER than the strata underneath and other challenges. All strata appear to have been deposited in 0.05% of the time so claimed or 2000 times more recently.